Enough with the news and politics, here's some cool old cars

A vacation dispatch from Atlantic Nationals in New Brunswick.

Atlantic Nationals, held every year in Moncton, is the largest classic car event in this part of the world. I’d never attended until now, and unfortunately I can’t make it to the main show scheduled for this weekend (and which should feature over 2,000 classic and custom rides), but a fortuitously timed work trip to Colchester County allowed me to drive the extra hour to Moncton for the show n’ shine on Wednesday night.

The Riviera was looking for California Sun, but New Brunswick Sun can be pretty nice, too.

I’ll be back to the controversial politics and stuff soon, I promise. But for the sake of one’s mental health sometimes you have to shut off the news and do something that actually makes you feel better.

And classic cars are kind of a “reverse berserk button” or me: if I’m in a bad mood I start feeling instantly better once the conversation turns to that subject.

Pictured: someone who spends way too much time on Twitter.

A cool thing about attending vintage car events up here is that you get to see some rare “Big Three” cars rebadged for the Canadian market, like this alternate-universe 1956 Ford sold in Canada as the Meteor Rideau 500:

Meteors were mostly rebadged Mercurys and were sold well into the seventies. But no matter how hard Ford of Canada’s marketing department tried, everyone called them “Mercury Meteors.”

And the owner of this Beaumont was apparently under the mistaken impression that it wasn’t a brand name for rebadged and restyled Chevrolet Chevelles, but a Pontiac model name:

GM of Canada did give rebadged Pontiacs (and some Chevys, and yeah this is all a bit confusing) their own brand name, though: Acadian.

I tried to stump Twitter’s best-known classic-car identifier David “@Iowahawk” Burge by asking if he could recognize an Acadian, but all he said was “who are you and what are you doing in my kitchen at 3am?” before reaching for his shotgun. Typical American, won’t admit he doesn’t know anything about Canada, amirite?

Kind of fitting to see one in Moncton, which has a large French-speaking population descended from the Acadian settlers (many of whom were deported by the British to what’s now Louisiana, and now you know where the “Cajun” comes from).

That was before my time, but I remember the “Pontiac Acadian” being sold up here in the eighties. It was a rebadged Chevette, and oh hey guess what?

Out of frame: Nelson Muntz walking down the street with his pants pulled down, forced to wave to the people and blow them kisses.

Classic Mustangs and Camaros and Chargers are a dime a dozen. The people who keep mundane cars like this on the road are my personal heroes.

In fact, this impeccably restored Datsun B210 was the highlight of the show for me:

It’s a “Honey Bee” special edition, which in the mileage-and-inflation-conscious seventies meant it was stripped of equipment standard on most Datsuns to reduce its weight and price.

I said I’d never get a tattoo, but I’d totally get a tattoo of this logo:

The British were represented by this old Hillman, a remnant of when Canada’s ties to the Mother Country were much stronger and British imports sold quite well up here.

And then we all collectively realized that British cars of the period were grossly unreliable, especially compared to Datsun Honey Bees and other Japanese imports. (General Motors of Canada’s Firenza fiasco might have been the final nail in the coffin.) My late grandparents in rural Newfoundland once owned a British Ford Consul, but by the time I arrived on the scene they had a Toyota Corolla wagon.

Most of them didn’t survive Canadian weather in any event. To be fair, neither did most of the early Japanese imports. (That Honey Bee was purchased in the US and spirited up here, a rare example of an American these days actually fleeing to Canada.) That’s what makes it so special seeing them in the metal outside of, say, Arizona.

The spirit of the early seventies, in one trunk badge:

Kruschchev: “We will bury you.”

USA: “Sorry, did you say something? We were busy making our moderately priced family cars look like rocket ships.”

I’m pretty good at identifying old cars but I’m stumped by that one. If only there were a way to know what year and make it was.

Ford in 1973: “The new Mustang is too big and bloated. And now this gas crisis! I wish we could make it smaller.”

Monkey’s paw curls…

I still love the early seventies “fat” Mustang and even the Mustang II can be pretty cool when they managed to cram a V-8 into the engine bay. But this is why I roll my eyes when people complain that the electric Mach E somehow “tarnishes” the brand.

/r/ProgressPics in real life:

With all due respect to Stevie and Marvin and Diana, it was this kind of Motown product that truly defined the sound of the sixties:

Twenty or thirty years from now, will people be lining up to watch Teslas and Rivians and Mustang Mach Es cruising to and from classic car shows?

Honestly, yes, they very well might be. I’m old enough to remember people sneering that Japanese cars would never be considered classics, and yet here were are.

The modern electric car, really, does pretty much everything better than the sixties muscle car. It’s faster, handles better, is more comfortable, safer and reliable.

Except for the engine sound. That peaked during the postwar internal-combustion-engine era and it’s been all downhill from there, to the point where new cars at their best sound like high-end vacuum cleaners.

You have to respect the classics while they’re still here - and while you’re still here. And I have every intention to be back for the main weekend show in Moncton next summer.

I’ll be back to posting my usual kind of content this week. (But do I have to? Can’t I just write about old cars forever? Is this what a mid-life crisis feels like?)